ancient ideas, fresh trails
To the train we skipped along a trail by the lake, under a bridge, into a tunnel, to Rathaus, or council house where the city government is located. We ate bratwurst and currywurst and walked to get gelato. Then canoes on the Alster river, a network of lazy canals winding behind huge beautiful homes with…
Continue reading ➞ My German Vacation Journal 6: trains canoes and shoes
Meanwhile high above Nova Scotia I'm watching the Salzburg choir and symphony perform a majestic piece by Bach and I'm reminded of a great scene from Band of Brothers illustrating how horror and beauty inhabit the same landscape. American paratroopers of the 101st airborne are sitting in the bombed out shell of a building observing…
Continue reading ➞ My German Vacation Journal 3: Beethoven, Porgy and Bess
The things you see when you travel, airports, planes and places of sanctity I've heretofore resisted revealing. I stood next to a young man in the Tulsa airport men's only place of business expressing our relief and noticing his multitask wizardry. He was text messaging. I won't ask to borrow his phone I won't I…
Continue reading ➞ My Germany Vacation Journal 2: Lord, I just want to see, and eat some bratwurst
It's 1969 and I'm in the woods looking for Germans along with my nine year old buddies helping our friend Tom celebrate a birthday before the advent of chuckie cheese. He wanted to play war games after cake and ice cream so we drifted through the timber firing our fingers like browning automatic rifles at…
Continue reading ➞ My German Vacation Journal 1: living with our past while hoping in our future
My son is getting an $8,000 haircut in two weeks. He’s been at the University of Hamburg studying and traveling since January and for the past two years his hair has grown along with his learning, a marker of time, evidence that the shafts of hair are passing through the follicle reservoirs at the speed…
Congratulations James Sutherland! Can't believe my nephew is graduating from Harding University. Just a few years ago he was a leaping gnome on a trampoline and a make-believe toothbrush on a crocodile in one of the first stories I ever put on paper. Carbon Canyon is a children's story written during a vacation in 1999.…
I should have listened to the grizzled veteran, the St. Louis Cardinals concessionaire who sold me the hot dog when he admonished me to, “Stick that five dollar bill in your pocket and quit waving it around like a 4th of July flag!” I stared at him mouth agape, not sure of his meaning, and…
